Prosecutors appeal Demjanjuk’s release from jail

BERLIN (JTA) -- Munich state prosecutors appealed a district
court's decision to release convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk
from prison pending his appeal.

Monday's appeal of Demjanjuk's
release, following his conviction on war crimes on May 12,
2011, also appealed the five-year sentence handed down that
day for being too lenient.

The prosecutors' reasons will be presented in writing and only
then released to the public, according to a spokesperson for the Munich
District II court, which found Demjanjuk, 91, guilty as an accessory to
nearly 28,000 murders in the Nazi death camp Sobibor in occupied Poland
in 1943.

Demjanjuk's main attorney, Ulrich Busch, appealed the
conviction immediately. It is likely the appeals process will take more
than a year, observers have said.

Demjanjuk, who is stateless and has no relatives in
Germany, has been placed in a nursing home.

While Jewish leaders have decried Demjanjuk's release from
jail, a group of Dutch co-plaintiffs said they found the entire court
proceeding encouraging.

Their “respect for the court’s verdict includes respect for
the court’s decision to release Demjanjuk until his appeals are decided
and the guilty verdict is upheld,” said a statement from their
Cologne-based attorney, Cornelius Nestler.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Court Judge Dan Polster last week appointed a
public defender to assist Demjanjuk in reviving the U.S.
denaturalization case against him. The move follows the release by The
Associated Press of a 1985 FBI report challenging the authenticity of
the Nazi ID card that was the key evidence against him in the German
trial and in stripping him of his U.S. citizenship for lying about his
Nazi past in order to gain entry into the United States.